RFC 76: Option 22 And Suburban Graffiti

Radio Free Charleston‘s 76th episode, “Peace Sign Shirt,” is ONLINE NOW! This episode features two long songs, punctuated by a Plant Ro Duction Mini Movie, and a couple of important announcements.

Our music is by Option 22 and Suburban Graffiti, and each song clocks in at around the seven-minute mark, so we kept everything else to a minimum this time around.

Host segments were shot Tuesday at lunchtime high atop the Municipal Parking Building on Washington Street.

Our first musical guest is Option 22, the musical arm of The Riff Raff arts collective, from Princeton. You may remember their music from the end credits of our 75th episode. Option 22 is Lori McKinney,Robert Blankenship, Albert Perrone, Briddy Morris and Clayton. Their music is a delightfully eclectic blend of world music and folk music with elements of electronica and rock thrown in for good measure.

We recorded Option 22 on the stage in front of Taylor Books during the second Saturday of Festivall, and on this show we get to hear their song, “Soulsong.”

Option 22 has four CDs of original music, which you can order from their website. If you get the chance to hear these folks live, you should. It’s like taking a sonic bath in a musical lake.

In between songs, I explain that the First Great Guitar Giveaway is being delayed until we get technical issues worked out with the contest website, and we also have a very touching Mini Movie from The Plant Ro Duction Amish Organic Foundry.

We wrap up the show with Suburban Graffiti. This is a band that we’ve been working to get on RFC for almost two years. Tyler Chiartis, Jack Burgess, Garrett Rhodes and Thomas Martin have a fresh sound that’s unlike anything else in the area. Their power pop approach to complex musical structures makes Suburban Graffiti a rare treat. Juggling our shooting schedule with the band’s school schedule kept us from connecting until now. One quick correction: In the credits, we list the song as being written by Suburban Graffiti, but I believe that Tyler is responsible for the music and lyrics.

If Thomas looks familiar to our longtime viewers, it’s because he’s been on the show before, as a member of Seven Minutes Til Midnight and filling in with Doctor Senator.

We had planned to record the band at The Blue Parrot during jam night, but since none of the band members are 21, and we don’t want to get our friends at The Parrot in any trouble, we shifted the taping to AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, somewhere West of Bigley Avenue.

The recording session was a blast, and we captured four terrific songs that night. You’ll be seeing the others on future episodes of the show.

Speaking of future episodes of Radio Free Charleston, there are some changes coming. This will be the last edition of the show hosted on the Gazz.com servers. You will still be able to find the show posted right here in PopCult, but recent advances will allow us to bypass the Gazette servers, where space was limited, and upload the shows directly to our archive site, so that we don’t have shows disappearing after a few weeks.

Primarily, this will allow us to manage our archives better. We’ll also have a little more editorial freedom (not that we were being oppressed or anything) and we might do the occasional longer show if the mood strikes us. All of the shows will be available to embed, so if anyone wants to share their performance, it’ll be a lot easier.

This is not a nasty split or anything. We’ll still be part of The Gazz.com, but we’ll be less of a headache to our editor, and we’ll be able to turn up in other places on the web. After three years of taking up server space at The Gazette, we need to stretch our legs a little. But we’ll still be here in PopCult.

So keep checking back. In the coming weeks we’re going to have new music from Melty Melty, Tofujitsu, The Universes, Flare Baroshi, Watt 4, Whitechapel District, The Limbs, OVADA, J. Marinelli, and many others.